I ran into this a couple of years ago making an Amazon purchase of spices. In my state (NY) “food seasonings” are exempt. I was charged sales tax. I contacted Amazon with a request for a refund and the response was “You live in New York, you pay tax.” I sent them the formal list from the state website and eventually they did send a refund but not without a fight.

At least Etsy is recognizing the difficulties with taxable/non-taxable, but there is another iron in the fire. Once you figure out whether the kind of candy and yarn are taxable, the additional question is if the taxing jurisdiction may have had a different rate at the time the purchase was made. Every time I fill in my form there is always some jurisdiction where (for example) a city within that jurisdiction has enacted a different rate for a period of a few weeks or so.

So if the item is indeed taxable, and has been sold to someone in the city where a temporary 1/4% increase in tax rate was in effect from May 20 through August 1, I have to check my records and note the date the sale was made.

ALL THE WHILE Ebay the big shark in the ocean continues to try to relevant by staying silent. One would think something like this would have come from ebay first.

But then again EBAY HASN’T HAD AN ORIGINAL IDEA IN YEARS.